• Atmosphere
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.13-26
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• 2010

The Urban Canopy Model (UCM) implemented in WRF model is applied to improve urban meteorological forecast for fine-scale (about 1-km horizontal grid spacing) simulations over the city of Seoul. The results of the surface air temperature and wind speed predicted by WRF-UCM model is compared with those of the standard WRF model. The 2-m air temperature and wind speed of the standard WRF are found to be lower than observation, while the nocturnal urban canopy temperature from the WRF-UCM is superior to the surface air temperature from the standard WRF. Although urban canopy temperature (TC) is found to be lower at industrial sites, TC in high-intensity residential areas compares better with surface observation than 2-m temperature. 10-m wind speed is overestimated in urban area, while urban canopy wind (UC) is weaker than observation by the drag effect of the building. The coupled WRF-UCM represents the increase of urban heat from urban effects such as anthropogenic heat and buildings, etc. The study indicates that the WRF-UCM contributes for the improvement of urban weather forecast such nocturnal heat island, especially when an accurate urban information dataset is provided.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.45-54
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• 2020

High-resolution meteorological simulations were conducted using a Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with an Urban Canopy Model (UCM) in the Ulsan Metropolitan Region (UMR) where large-scale industrial facilities are located on the coast. We improved the land cover input data for the WRF-UCM by reclassifying the default urban category into four detailed areas (low and high-density residential areas, commercial areas, and industrial areas) using subdivided data (class 3) of the Environmental and Geographical Information System (EGIS). The urban area accounted for about 12% of the total UMR and the largest proportion (47.4%) was in the industrial area. Results from the WRF-UCM simulation in a summer episode with high temperatures showed that the modeled temperatures agreed greatly with the observations. Comparison with a standard WRF simulation (WRF-BASE) indicated that the temporal and spatial variations in surface air temperature in the UMR were properly captured. Specifically, the WRF-UCM reproduced daily maximum and nighttime variations in air temperature very well, indicating that our model can improve the accuracy of temperature simulation for a summer heatwave. However, the WRF-UCM somewhat overestimated wind speed in the UMR largely due to an increased air temperature gradient between land and sea.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.232-245
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• 2017

In this study, the high-resolution numerical simulation results considering landuse characteristics are analyzed by using single layer Urban Canopy Model (UCM) in Weather Research Forecast (WRF). For this, the impact of urban parameters such as roughness length and anthropogenic heat in UCM is analyzed. These values are adjusted to Seoul metropolitan area in Korea. The results of assessment are verified against observation from surface and flux tower. Forecast system equipped with UCM shows an overall improvement in the simulations of meteorological parameters, especially temperature at 2 m, surface sensible and latent heat flux. Major contribution of UCM is appreciably found in urban area rather than non-urban. The non-urban area is indirectly affected. In simulated latent heat flux, applying UCM is possible to simulate the change similarly with observations on urban area. Anthropogenic heat employed in UCM shows the most realistic results in terms of temperature and surface heat flux, indicating thermodynamic treatment of UCM could enhance the skills of high resolution forecast model in urban and non-urban area.

• Proceedings of the Korea Air Pollution Research Association Conference
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• 2010.04a
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• pp.669-670
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• 2010

• Proceedings of The Korean Society of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Conference
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• 2012.07a
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• pp.38-40
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• 2012

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.119-130
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• 2012

Heat island phenomena in Chuncheon (Korea) were investigated using air temperature measured by automatic weather stations and temperature dataloggers located at rural and urban sites. Numerical simulation of the phenomena was performed using Weather Research and Forecasting Urban Canopy Model (WRF-UCM) and results were compared with the observation. The model was initialized with NCEP/FNL data. The horizontal resolution of the fine domain is 0.33 km. The results of observational analyses show that the intensity of heat island was significantly higher during the nighttime than during the daytime. The highest measured temperature difference between rural and urban site is $3.49^{\circ}C$ and average temperature difference varies between 1.4 and $1.9^{\circ}C$. Good agreement was found between the simulated and observed temperatures. However, significantly overestimated wind speed was found at the urban sites. The linear regression analysis between observed and simulated temperature shows high correlation coefficient 0.96 for urban and 0.94 for rural sites while for wind speed, a very low correlation coefficient was found, 0.30 and 0.55 respectively.

• Atmosphere
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.483-499
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• 2015

This study examined the impact of change of land-use and meteorological condition due to urbanization on heat environment in Seoul metropolitan area over a decade (2000 and 2009) using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)-Urban Canopy Model (UCM). The numerical simulations consist of three sets: meteorological conditions of (1) October 2000 with land-use data in 2000 (base simulation), (2) October 2009 with land-use data in 2000 (meteorological condition change effect) and (3) October 2009 with land-use data in 2009 (both the effects of land-use and meteorological condition change). According to the experiment results, the change of land-use and meteorological condition by urbanization over a decade showed different contribution to the change of heat environment in Seoul metropolitan area. There was about $1^{\circ}C$ increase in near-surface (2 m) temperature over all of the analyzed stations due to meteorological condition change. In stations where the land-use type changed into urban, large temperature increase at nighttime was observed by combined effects of meteorological condition and land-use changes (maximum $4.23^{\circ}C$). Urban heat island (UHI) over $3^{\circ}C$ (temperature difference between Seoul and Okcheon) increased 5.24% due to the meteorological condition change and 26.61% due to the land-use change. That is, land-use change turned out to be contributing to the strengthening of UHI more than the meteorological condition change. Moreover, the land-use change plays a major role in the increase of sensible heat flux and decrease of latent heat flux.

• Proceedings of the Korean Environmental Sciences Society Conference
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• 2019.10a
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• pp.59-59
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• 2019

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.737-753
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• 2011

The typical characteristics of seasonal winds were studied around the Pohang using two-stage (average linkage then k-means) clustering technique based on u- and v-component wind at 850 hpa from 2004 to 2006 (obtained the Pohang station) and a high-resolution (0.5 km grid for the finest domain) WRF-UCM model along with an up-to-date detailed land use data during the most predominant pattern in each season. The clustering analysis identified statistically distinct wind patterns (7, 4, 5, and 3 clusters) representing each spring, summer, fall, and winter. During the spring, the prevailed pattern (80 days) showed weak upper northwesterly flow and late sea-breeze. Especially at night, land-breeze developed along the shoreline was converged around Yeongil Bay. The representative pattern (92 days) in summer was weak upper southerly flow and intensified sea-breeze combined with sea surface wind. In addition, convergence zone between the large scale background flow and well-developed land-breeze was transported around inland (industrial and residential areas). The predominant wind distribution (94 days) in fall was similar to that of spring showing weak upper-level flow and distinct sea-land breeze circulation. On the other hand, the wind pattern (117 days) of high frequency in winter showed upper northwesterly and surface westerly flows, which was no change in daily wind direction.

• Atmosphere
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.567-583
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• 2019

In this study, the high-resolution numerical simulations considering detailed anthropogenic heat, albedo, emission and roughness length are analyzed by using single layer Urban Canopy Model (UCM) in Weather Research Forecast (WRF). For this, improved urban parameter data for Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) was collected from global data. And then the parameters were applied to WRF-UCM model after it was processed into 2-dimensional topographical data. The 6 experiments were simulated by using the model with each parameter and verified against observation from Automated Weather Station (AWS) and flux tower for the temperature and sensible heat flux. The data for sensible heat flux of flux towers on Jungnang and Bucheon, the temperature of AWS on Jungnang, Gangnam, Bucheon and Neonggok were used as verification data. In the case of summer, the improvement of simulation by using detailed anthropogenic heat was higher than the other experiments in sensible flux simulation. The results of winter case show improved in all simulations using each advanced parameters in temperature and sensible heat flux simulation. Improvement of urban parameters in this study are possible to reflect the heat characteristics of urban area. Especially, detailed application of anthropogenic heat contributed to the enhancement of predicted value for sensible heat flux and temperature.